Brett Ratner Still Working on Youngblood Comic Adaptation; Robert Pattinson Not Attached

05.13.10 by BJSprecher

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Director Brett Ratner has a very hot-and-cold relationship with comic book movies. On the "hot" side, his turn at directing Marvel Comics' X-Men in their last franchise adventure, X-Men: The Last Stand, was the most profitable of the three movies, easily doubling its $210 million budget. On the "cold" side, The Last Stand was the most poorly reviewed of the X movies, with many fans blaming Ratner for the collapse of the franchise. With the
recent return of Bryan Singer to the X fold, it's unlikely Ratner will ever get another chance to work on another X movie, but he recently told MTV that he's looking forward to starting his own comic book movie franchise with Youngblood, a big-screen adaptation of Rob Liefeld's comic book of the same name.

Indian media conglomerate Reliance Big Entertainment picked up the rights to Liefeld's comic book about a team of government-sanctioned superheroes back in February 2009. Ratner was attached as director at that time and said that the movie would be a "personal passion project" for him. Several months later, Liefeld announced that TV writers J.P. Lavin and Chad Damiani had been hired to pen the script. Then, Ratner stirred up some controversy by announcing that he wanted Robert Pattinson to star in his "very edgy, cool film"
about superheroes who are as much concerned about their own celebrity as they are about saving the world. After that news, everything went quiet on the Youngblood front.

Fast-forward nine months and Ratner has just confirmed to MTV that he is still at work on Youngblood, despite having Tower Heist lined up as his next directing gig. Ratner said that he's "working on the script" right now and said that Youngblood is "in the future, whether it's next year or whatever." He also admitted that it's likely he's "never going to do another X-Men," but that he's been eyeing other comic and comic-related properties for some time in the hopes of starting his own franchise.

...to do a new franchise, I don't care what the budget is—
even if it was small—but it would be exciting because then I could start my own franchise. I could do what Bryan did with X-Men.

I've been in a lot of things—God of War, which didn't work out, Conan the Barbarian, which didn't work out—so I'm interested in comic books. I grew up reading comic books. Even though all the rumors said, 'Oh, Brett didn't read comics,' but I read Batman and Superman.Superman was my favorite comic, which is why I was first attached to make Superman.Youngblood, obviously, I discovered later in life and I just fell in love with it.

Ratner went on to say that Robert Pattinson was not attached to the movie, which will surely sadden all of the Twilighters fans who were salivating at the prospect of seeing RPattz in spandex.

I was just throwing a name out there because he was hot. When we get the script, then I'm going to go to the best actor for the role.